Defined Term
 

No, but I appreciate having my horizons broadened.

You may be.

But this story is not at all surprising to me. :rofl:

S_A_M

Have you ever actually met her?

S_A_M

(MY guess is that you have, and I just whiffed.)

Defined Term
 

I'll bet a month's fees that Sebby knows what it means.

Solidarity!
 

GM hit by UAW strike

Marathon bargaining session fails to produce deal as 73,000 UAW members start strike; talks said to continue.

The United Auto Workers union started a strike at General Motors facilities at 11 a.m. ET Monday as about 73,000 UAW members started walking off the job and hitting the picket lines at the nation's largest automaker.

But negotiations were continuing just before the 11 a.m. ET strike deadline, according to GM spokesman Tom Wickham. Spokesmen from GM and the union were not immediately available for comment.

United Auto Worker union member Barbara O'Leary carries strike signs to a General Motors plant near Detroit, in preparation for a possible strike that could start at 11 a.m. Monday.

A feed from CNN affiliate WDIV-TV in Michigan showed picket signs going up at 11 a.m. outside the GM plant in Lake Orion, Mich., followed by a steady stream of union members driving out of the plant's main gates.

The workers had stayed on the job for nine days past the original expiration of the contract on Sept. 14, while union and management negotiators kept talking. But after the union set the strike deadline late Sunday, an all-night negotiating session failed to produce a deal by the deadline.

But late Sunday night, the union set an 11 a.m. ET strike deadline and issued a statement Monday saying that management had been unwilling to address the unions' key concerns on job security for the members at GM.

While the strike idles 59 U.S. plants and facilities at GM, it does not affect the two other automakers whose workers are represented by the UAW, Ford Motor or Chrysler Group, which between them have more than 100,000 UAW still on the job. Members at those companies have been working under their own contract extensions as the union concentrated on reaching a deal with the UAW.

A key to the contract talks is GM's goal of shifting an estimated $51 billion in future health care costs for retirees and their family members to union-controlled trust funds. GM has more than 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses receiving such benefits today. Shifting those costs is seen as a key to GM efforts to close its cost gap with nonunion automakers such as Toyota Motor and Honda Motor.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/24/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

Ugh.

aV

Solidarity!
 

Fed bailout of pension obligations for nickles on the dollar in 2010. It's inevitable.

Jesus, I wonder where you found a practicing Catholic.

Defined Term
 

I think I do and if I'm right, that's a practice known only in legend, or theoretically.

Defined Term
 

Hint: Sex with shoes on.

Solidarity!
 

Well, that may be inevitable, but that's not what these negotiations are about. GM has a huge problem with retiree health. Its this multi-billion dollar monster that's currently killing them. The GM pension is (I believe) actually overfunded.

Of course, this could all be posturing by the UAW. There very well could be a deal, but one that won't be easy to sell to the members. Thus the strike (likely a very short one) is simply put on to show the members that the union is really fighting for them!

aV

Batshit Crazy Dictator In NY, Today's Version
 

Two random and somewhat conflicting thoughts:

* I never really got the outrage about Ahmadinejad wanting to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. Yes, he's a Fascistic Asshole, but he's Today's Fascistic Asshole. It's not as if he were the one who ordered 9/11, and the outrage of the day expressed by pundits and politicians seems to be conflating the two. We can keep the concepts separate, fellas, and him laying wreath at the site isn't sacrilegious.

* That said, I don't understand WTF Columbia is doing inviting him to speak while he's slumming in town. Yes, I hear all the stuff about academic freedom, fine, fine. But remember, Columbia, that you're affirmatively giving this twit a platform and some degree of legitimacy by doing so. That's stupid. Stop it.

Uh, carry on.

Gattigap

Batshit Crazy Dictator In NY, Today's Version
 

2. on both. Give him a soap box somewhere on the street so he can yammer all he wants. Don't give him a fucking microphone.

• Other surprises from Bill O'Reilly's trip to Sylvia's:
  
  * Chairs and tables were sturdy and four-legged.
  
  * Napkins already on the table, leaving no need for them to be special-ordered.
  
  * Menu actually printed on paper, suggesting widespread literacy of clientele, rather than selections being sung to him by kindly old black man playing the banjo as he'd expected.
  
  * Meal served by waitstaff in a customary appetizer-entree-dessert order, and not out of a trough.
  
  * Meatloaf made of ground beef, not ground welfare checks.
  
  * No need to pay with food stamps--credit cards and U.S currency accepted.
  
  * Money was collected through traditional handing over of a bill, rather than mugging.
  
  * Widespread use of knives, forks, spoons.

linky

Jon Swift points out the complications of today's meta-debate.

• In what might be the most rapid fulfillment of Godwin's Law on record, some compared Ahmadinejad to Hitler. "Why are they inviting the Persian Hitler to Columbia?" said Columbia alumnus and conservative writer David Horowitz. "Would Columbia have invited Hitler to speak?" asked others.
  
  Although I believe this was probably intended as a rhetorical question, Columbia Dean John Coatsworth decided that he would try to tamp down some of the heightened emotion surrounding this debate by going ahead and answering the question on Fox News: "If Hitler were in the United States and he wanted a platform from which to speak he would have plenty of platforms to speak from in the United States. If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him."
  
  But Coatsworth's attempt to inject some thought and rationality into the debate over whether Columbia should let Hitler speak (for the second time--almost) just raised more important questions: If you were a doctor and Hitler had a life threatening illness, would you treat him? If Hitler knocked at your door and he was bleeding and he said he had been in an automobile accident, would you invite him in to use your telephone? If you were a Catholic priest and Hitler told you in confession that he had killed six million people, would you keep your vow of silence or report him to the authorities? And finally, a question that I think would stump a lot of conservatives, if Hitler's mother wanted to abort him, would you drive her to a Planned Parenthood clinic or counsel her to keep the baby?

Batshit Crazy Dictator In NY, Today's Version
 

I guess I don't get this. It's not like it would keep him from getting his message out. He's the President of Iran. He already has many microphones. The point of inviting him to speak at a university is that the intellectual debate at the school is improved. Surely it's beneficial to people at Columbia to have the chance to hear him. In the First Amendment context, courts say that the remedy to speech you don't like it more speech. Why isn't that true here?